


run for your life

by jjokkiri



Category: VICTON (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Feelings, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Murder, Organized Crime, Secret Organizations, seungsik-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-22 23:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23001859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjokkiri/pseuds/jjokkiri
Summary: There isn’t a lot that Seungsik is allowed to want. But, all that Seungsik has ever wanted is to keep Seungwoo safe.No matter the cost.
Relationships: Han Seungwoo/Kang Seungsik
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	run for your life

_Destiny was a funny thing,_ Seungsik always thought.

It guided life. He was born into a world that tightly held his hands through every step, every second of his life. He was born into a family that anticipated the day he was old enough to hold a gun between his small hands and take a life. That was an unavoidable fate. 

_‘You can’t run away from what you’re meant to do, Sik,’_ his mother’s voice echoed in his mind every time he dropped the heavy metal of the pistol and let it clatter onto the surface of his desk, thinking to himself that he didn’t want to live such a complicated life anymore.

He was never taught to care about the lives of people he didn’t know. He wasn’t meant to care. 

But, standing in his dark bedroom at twenty-four years of age, there was something tugged at his heartstrings when he glanced at the gun on his desk. The simple gleam of gunmetal in moonlight always caught his eye in the darkness and he was taken back to a vivid memory that always lingered in the back of his mind— _seven, a dark alleyway, a wounded boy._

And destiny was a funny thing. Seungsik didn’t like to think that he believed in it. 

He did what felt right, what he wanted. 

Surely, every minor decision he made wasn’t something that could be written in the stars.

To Seungsik, it always felt like something people threw out to justify their wrongs. It always felt like something that people fell back on to pretend they didn’t have control over their lives. To Seungsik, destiny was silly; ridiculous, even. 

But, then there was Han Seungwoo.

As much as he tried to desperately claw away from the implications that everything in his life was already predetermined from the moment he was born, as much as he tried to shake it off, Seungsik knew—somewhere deep in his heart, somewhere in the depths of his mind—meeting Han Seungwoo was something he was meant to do. 

As much as he tried to avoid it, there was still Han Seungwoo.

* * *

They were seven when they met for the first time. _Seungsik was._

Seungsik was small and still clumsy with his fingers at seven. He followed his father with quick footsteps, afraid to be left behind somewhere in the dark streets. At seven, most children get to hold their parents’ hands when they walk down the streets. At seven, Seungsik stumbled along behind his father with his fingers gripped tightly around a medical kit packed by his mother.

 _‘It’s dangerous, Sik,’_ his mother told him before they left. _‘You have to protect your father.’_

(He wouldn’t learn until much later in his life that his family was more dangerous than anyone who could try to hurt them somewhere on the empty streets. He wouldn’t learn until much later in his life that he was expected to follow his father to learn, not help.)

It was a pattern.

They would walk together, Seungsik’s clumsy footsteps following his father’s strides. Seungsik never knew where they were headed but he knew to be obedient and follow. It was a pattern he was used to. Somewhere along the way, they would stop and then, there was the sound of metal moving against the leather material of his father’s jacket. 

_‘Sik,’_ his father would say, _‘look away.’_

There would be a loud bang, a grunt; the sound of a body falling against the hard concrete. 

And that was it. They would head home for the night, back to his mother who would smile and stroke his hair, tell him that he did a wonderful job protecting his father while they got rid of bad people. Sometimes, Seungsik fell asleep on his father’s shoulder when they walked home. On those nights, he wouldn’t hear his mother’s praise. Those nights were rare.

They rarely deviated from the standard.

They never saw someone else in the middle of the night.

 _Seungsik_ never saw someone else.

That night was different. 

When he looked away as instructed, there was a flash of colour in his peripheral. _Green._

There was the sound of a gunshot.

Seungsik caught the eyes of a boy standing in the shadows when he turned his head. Their eyes met and the boy stared back at him with wide eyes filled with terror. 

He ran.

Something about the other boy’s prompt reaction spurred a sharp rush of adrenaline in Seungsik. Without thinking, Seungsik sprinted after the moving shadow.

 _“Seungsik!”_ He heard his name shouted after him in a panic—his father—but he continued to run in the direction that the boy in green had gone.

He wandered down the alleyways, peering at the dark brick walls around him. He wasn’t used to his surroundings. He was used to following his father, used to staring after his father’s back as he ran. Still, he chased after the boy in green, running wherever his feet took him.

He found the boy crouched in a nearby alleyway. He cowered when he saw Seungsik approach him as if he was afraid that Seungsik might hurt him. 

Seungsik settled down on the pavement next to the boy. 

He had his knees pulled up his chest and his arms hugged them. 

The boy’s bangs were too long for him to see his eyes properly but he could see the way they shook when he looked at Seungsik from behind his arms. And Seungsik used to be afraid of strangers. He recognized the look in the boy’s eyes as fear.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Seungsik said.

(When he was much older, Seungsik would learn that the doubt in the boy’s eyes was fair. He would learn that he was meant to be feared.)

Seungsik held the small medical kit between his hands with a smile. 

“You’re bleeding,” he said. 

Unwilling to speak, the boy stared at him quietly from behind his scraped arms. The fresh blood stained through the sleeves of his sweater. It told Seungsik that the wounds were new. He must have hurt himself running away from Seungsik. He must have hurt himself before that, even. A simple fall couldn’t have scraped him up so badly.

Seungsik spared him from questions. The seven-year-old boy held out his hand.

“I have bandaids,” he said, simply.

Afraid that someone might find them, the boy turned his head to frantically search their surroundings with panic in his eyes. Seungsik patiently waited with his hand extended.

The boy’s decision was made silently. He shifted closer to Seungsik and dropped his guard. He silently placed his wrist into Seungsik’s grasp.

Seungsik’s eyes brightened as he wrapped his fingers around the other boy’s wrist.

He worked quietly.

The space between them was almost uncomfortably quiet. It was only interrupted by the other boy’s quiet hissing at the stinging sensation when Seungsik’s slightly clumsy fingers dug the cotton pad soaked with alcohol too deeply into the scattered cuts. 

He felt the boy’s eyes on him when he snipped the bandages with the small scissors in the kit.

“What’s your name?” Seungsik asked softly, his nimble fingers quickly tying a neat bow on the bandages wrapped around the other boy’s arm. The boy winced when Seungsik tightened the bandages. Seungsik glanced up at the grimacing boy. He offered, “I’m Seungsik.”

With a small frown on his lips, the other boy glanced at him—timid and hesitant. They made brief eye contact before he looked away from Seungsik, unwilling to look at a stranger for too long. The boy pulled his arm away from Seungsik’s grip and held onto it.

“Be careful,” Seungsik scolded. “You shouldn’t be moving it so roughly.”

The boy ignored him.

“Fine,” Seungsik exhaled in a puff of air, a laugh and an offended huff. He crossed his arms over his chest but he remained knelt next to the wounded boy. He scrunched up his nose, “Do what you want. I won’t care if you die, I don’t even know your name.”

“Seungwoo,” he murmured. Seungsik looked at him, curiously. The boy stared down at his hands. He repeated himself, quietly, “My name is Seungwoo.”

* * *

(Seungsik left Seungwoo alone in the alleyway when he heard heavy footsteps approaching them and his father calling his name. Something in his gut told him that he shouldn’t let his father know anything about the strange boy in green. 

So, he ran.)

* * *

They didn’t meet again until they were much older.

They didn’t meet again until Seungsik was seventeen and struggling through his last years of high school, his last futile years of trying to live a normal life as a normal boy. 

When the chance came, when they met again, Seungwoo didn’t remember him.

But, Seungsik remembered. _Seungwoo still looked good in green._

* * *

Ten years slotted itself into that space in the timeline; their first meeting felt like it was so long ago for Seungsik but, to someone who couldn’t remember him, it didn’t matter.

Something blossomed between them despite Seungwoo not remembering Seungsik as the small boy who treated his wounds in an empty alleyway when they were still children.

 _A friendship._ Or maybe it was something more than that, Seungsik could never tell.

(If Seungsik was more honest with himself then it would always be more than a friendship.)

It started with something small.

It started from Seungwoo being held back after school for detention in their empty homeroom class. It started with Seungsik forgetting his backpack in the classroom.

He hadn’t been expecting it when he opened the door to the classroom and saw Seungwoo with his face buried in his arms on the desk. Ten years after their first meeting, Seungsik hadn’t been expecting a vivid reminder of their history when he walked into his classroom.

“Do you live close by?” Seungsik asked when Seungwoo looked up at him from his desk.

Confused, Seungwoo stared at him.

“Why?” he asked. Seungsik offered him a weak smile.

“Everyone already left and I figured it might be lonely to walk home alone,” he replied. “I was just wondering if you wanted some company on the way home after you finished up here.”

Seungwoo narrowed his eyes at Seungsik.

“Why are you here so late?” he asked, suspiciously. Seungsik pointed to the backpack hanging on the back of one of the chairs in the classroom.

“Forgot something.”

Seungwoo studied him silently.

 _It felt familiar._ Seungsik’s eyes met with his. Seungwoo kept his gaze.

“Will you tell anyone if I ditch detention?” he asked.

Seungsik’s lips quirked into an amused smile. He shook his head.

“I won’t tell a soul.”

Seungsik never learned the reason why Seungwoo had been held back for detention but it never really mattered to him. All he knew, all that mattered, was that it marked the moment in time that their lives crossed again—they were two parallel lines; lives so different that they weren’t met to cross paths again but meeting Seungwoo was something that made him smile.

A piece of his childhood followed him into his teenage years in the form of Han Seungwoo.

Seungsik dared to allow himself that small piece of childish naivety; that piece of his forgotten childhood. He allowed himself to childishly hold onto someone who didn’t remember him from their childhood to retain a piece of his own.

And somewhere along the way, it turned into Seungwoo walking him home from classes.

It turned into them being together at every possible moment.

It turned into Seungsik noticing every little thing that Seungwoo did for him.

That friendship—that little something—bloomed into something greater. With the tiny spark of selfish childishness that Seungsik recklessly nursed it with, their relationship blossomed into something he couldn’t recognize. Something he couldn’t control.

He didn’t know if it was intentional but Seungwoo always walked on the outside of the sidewalk whenever they were together as if he was trying to protect Seungsik from something, _anything_. And Seungwoo would never know that Seungsik was more dangerous than anything that could ever try to harm them. Seungsik would never tell him. _He couldn’t._

He couldn’t tell if it was intentional but Seungwoo always held the umbrella when it rained. He insisted that he was taller and it would be easier for both of them—Seungwoo wasn’t that much taller than him but Seungsik never argued with him when Seungwoo smiled at him, all close-lipped yet still bright; _charming_. He didn’t know what it meant when he noticed that Seungwoo always tilted the umbrella a little closer to him, even if it meant that his right shoulder would be soaked by the time they got back to Seungsik’s place.

But he knew that it felt nice to feel like the one being protected for once.

* * *

All by chance, Seungsik learned a little more about the boy he met in the middle of an abandoned alleyway when he was seven-years-old and still too naive about the world around him to understand what it meant for him to befriend anyone.

Seungwoo had nightmares. He dreamed of vividly flashing scenes where he was helplessly running down an alleyway without an escape. They haunted him.

Some nights, he would wake up in a cold sweat with his heart racing in his chest and those nightmares kept him awake.

One of those nights, he fell asleep on his sofa when Seungsik was still sprawled out on the floor of his living room scribbling down the answers to math problems.

 _It was strange._ Seungsik never stayed the night. He always made excuses to leave in the middle of the night, mindless excuses about how his parents needed him home. Seungwoo never learned much about the boy with the bright smile who lit a strange flame of warmth in his heart but it never changed the fact that being with Seungsik made him feel warm; _safe_.

Seungsik never stayed the night but, by chance, Seungsik was there with him when he woke up. Haunting nightmares threatening to rip him away from his slumber, Seungwoo woke up with a sharp gasp. His heart raced in his chest and his eyes were blown wide in horror.

Seungsik was immediately by his side.

The younger man crouched by the sofa and peered at him with curious eyes, a hand gently placed on Seungwoo’s shoulder to remind him that there was someone else with him.

“You had a nightmare,” Seungsik’s voice was immediately comforting. The way that Seungwoo relaxed at the sound of his voice was obvious; his shoulders dropped and his breathing slowly evened out. His tense posture eased under Seungsik’s palm. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he breathed out, softly. He didn’t sound like he believed his own words but he searched for reassurance in Seungsik’s eyes when he looked at him. Seungwoo slowly came back to reality when Seungsik’s fingers gently caressed the back of his hand. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

Seungwoo couldn’t answer him.

“You’re always walking me home and doing all sorts of things to make me comfortable. You think I don’t notice everything you do for me,” Seungsik said with a quiet laugh when Seungwoo stared at him silently, unable to say anything. It reminded him of the way that Seungwoo looked at him when they were children and he couldn’t figure out what to do with the boy who was kind enough to treat a stranger’s wounds.

Seungsik’s voice softened, “Let me take care of you for once.” _Let me take care of you again._

Something flashed in Seungwoo’s eyes, surprise.

“I’ll be the shoulder you can lean on,” he promised with a gentle smile. Seungsik was younger than him but Seungsik was warm, comforting and reliable. Seungwoo rested against his shoulder, eyes closed. “I’ll stay with you, tonight.”

* * *

It wasn’t until much later that Seungwoo had the guts to tell him what kind of dreams haunted him in the middle of the night.

Curled up together on Seungwoo’s bed, Seungsik’s head rested against Seungwoo’s shoulder, it wasn’t until much later that Seungsik learned that the countless horrors of running through the alleyways in the middle of the night somehow connected to a part of Seungwoo’s life that he couldn’t remember well.

It turned out that Seungwoo couldn’t remember Seungsik for a good reason.

And Seungsik felt his blood run cold when Seungwoo softly whispered that he was afraid of returning to that part of his life.

With a heavy heart and a burdened mind, Seungsik turned away from everything that blossomed between them. He was too close to the life that Seungwoo desperately wanted to avoid.

_He was what Seungwoo wanted to avoid._

It hurt to think because somewhere along the timeline of blossoming friendship and falling asleep against Seungwoo’s shoulder, an affection bloomed in Seungsik’s chest for the man with the kind smile and selfless heart. 

And it turned out that when Seungsik whispered promises of being the shoulder Seungwoo could lean on, he couldn’t keep them.

It turned out Seungsik lied.

* * *

No matter what he did to avoid fate, there was still Han Seungwoo.

And for Seungsik, everything about Han Seungwoo continued to linger in his mind long after the time they were meant to spend with their lives entwined had expired. Their lives were meant to be parallel; so different that they couldn’t ever cross. But they broke that boundary—their lives crossed twice and maybe that was two times too many. 

Yet, Seungsik couldn’t shake the thought that meeting Han Seungwoo was something that he was meant to do. There wasn’t anything that could explain every chance that stood directly in his path— _an eight-year-old boy dressed in green with wide, horrified eyes; a boy at eighteen haphazardly dressed in his green school uniform with tired eyes._ The chances presented themselves to him too easily—to meet Han Seungwoo, to know him.

Seungwoo was someone that he was destined to meet; to grow close to; to fall in love with.

Standing in the emptiness of his room in the middle of the night reminded him of how lonely the life he lived was. Whenever he was alone, he let his mind wander and somehow, he would always circle back to the memories of curling up in the warmth of Seungwoo’s arms. Somehow, he would always find himself missing what he purposefully left behind.

Han Seungwoo was everything his parents never wanted him to associate with. He learned when he turned ten that he wasn’t meant to associate with the people who weren’t his kind. 

He was never supposed to meet someone who would teach him to be kind.

But he did and he ran away when Seungwoo’s pleading eyes asked him to stay. He ran away when the guilt gnawed at his mind because he lived the kind of life that Seungwoo hated.

He ran away because he couldn’t bear the thought of being someone that reminded Seungwoo of a dark past. He ran away because he couldn’t continue to lie to someone who made him feel like he lived the normal life he desperately wanted to chase.

But Seungsik wasn’t allowed that. He wasn’t allowed to hold onto the fragments of his naive childhood and pretend he had a normal life when his hands were already bloodstained from a young age. He wasn’t allowed the happiness that normal people could have.

He wasn’t allowed to keep Han Seungwoo. And there was a heavy weight in the realization that Seungwoo deserved better than to be with someone like him.

(And maybe, the reality was just that Kang Seungsik was a coward who kept running away from what destiny had in store for him. 

Maybe he was a coward who just kept running away from happiness because he knew he didn’t deserve it—maybe he was a coward because the lives he took would never justify any kind of happiness for him. 

And maybe that was his fate.)

**Author's Note:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/yuseokki) / [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jjokkiri) ♡


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